Biological products are in demand to replace those made from petroleum and other non-renewable resources. Biological resources, however, have very different compositions and properties in comparison to petroleum. Novel methods of making the products in demand from biological resources are therefore required.
Triglycerides from vegetable oils such as soybean oil and canola oil are a particular type of biological resource and one type of biological hydrocarbonaceous oxygenated oil. These can be either fats or oils. They are composed of a glycerol backbone esterified with three fatty acids. The fatty acids can be either saturated or unsaturated. The fatty acids typically contain straight hydrocarbonaceous chains with between 6 and 24 carbon atoms per molecule. Each biological resource provides triglycerides composed of fatty acids with chains containing only a few narrowly defined numbers of carbon atoms. When these fatty acids are converted into paraffins, the distribution of the resulting paraffins is often narrow in terms of the length of the molecular chains (i.e., the carbon atom number per molecule), and inconsistent with the intended product use, e.g., for jet and diesel fuels, solvents and base oils.
Biological triglycerides can be hydrogenated to form paraffins, and these paraffins typically fall in the boiling range of diesel or jet fuel. In this aspect, U.S. Patent Application Publication No 2004/0230085 teaches a process for saturation of triglycerides, but employs an isomerization catalyst. The product contains 73 wt % iso-paraffins and only 13% n-paraffins. This process also does not describe how to make lighter paraffins useful as biologically-derived paraffinic solvents, or how to make heavier paraffins useful as biologically-derived paraffinic base oils.
Molecular Redistribution is a technique of paraffin disproportionation that can redistribute a paraffin feed into its lighter and heavier analogues with a broader boiling range centered at the same average molecular weight. Such a process is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,566,569, which employs a feedstock composed predominantly of pentanes. The entire disclosure is incorporated by reference in this application. There is no teaching in the patent, however, of the use of triglycerides as a feedstock. Furthermore, there has been no teaching of the production of biologically-derived paraffinic jet and diesel fuels, biologically-derived paraffinic solvents or biologically-derived paraffinic base oils.